From July 11th – 19th, we’ll be visiting 24 sites in and around Chicago, standing alongside busy streets, showing pictures of abortion victims and passing out brochures that offer help to women experiencing an unplanned pregnancy or who need post-abortion counseling. Over those eight days, we’ll reach hundreds of thousands of people.

The most amazing thing about a Face the Truth Tour is that the pictures we show actually save lives. In fact, when we were in downtown Chicago during last year’s Tour, a man approached us and told us that 13 years ago, a good friend of his had just found out his girlfriend was pregnant. They decided to have an abortion, but then they came across a Face the Truth Tour and saw what abortion does to a baby. After that, they changed their minds, and chose life for their baby instead.

Their daughter is now 13 years old, which means that she was saved on our very first Tour back in the year 2000. This girl is one of hundreds—and maybe thousands—of babies whose lives have been saved at Face the Truth Tours over the years.

I would like to invite you to take part in our Face the Truth Tour starting this Friday. All you need to do is show up to any of the 24 sites in and around Chicago and we’ll give you a sign to hold.

I hope you won’t want to miss this opportunity to participate in this powerful pro-life event!

In high school, I did half of my coursework at home through a Catholic home school program. As a freshman, I wrote an essay on why Catholics should pray a daily Rosary. Looking back, I’m not sure why I chose to defend such a strong position since I did not yet pray a daily Rosary myself, but my family and I have been committed to a daily Rosary ever since.

In the Rosary, Catholics recite a sequence of prayers while meditating on what are called the “mysteries” of the Rosary – pivotal events in the life of Jesus and His mother Mary. This summer, I challenged myself to memorize the “fruits,” or virtues, that correspond with each mystery. In my mind, most of these virtues were clearly connected to the events with which they were paired.

For example, we meditate on the virtue of faith in conjunction with the Resurrection; indeed, Catholics can have true faith only if they believe that Jesus rose from the dead. We meditate on the virtue of poverty along with the birth of Jesus in the stable at Bethlehem, where his bed was nothing more than a feeding trough.

But one pairing of fruits and mysteries always confused me. I would meditate on the virtue of courage in conjunction with the humiliating incident in which Jesus was crowned with thorns while Roman soldiers mocked him and spat on him. Before, I had always associated courage with a bold attitude – the ability to do what is right in the face of opposition and to speak the truth without compromise or apology. (more…)

Last month, I was at Chicago’s Navy Pier with the Pro-Life Action League to protest Planned Parenthood’s Generations Gala. With over 50 million children aborted in our country since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 and Planned Parenthood currently performing 40 percent of those abortions, we stood as witness to the violence against women and children that PP promotes in the act of abortion.

Nearing the end of the protest, I was approached by a young woman wearing a homemade sign pinned to her shirt that said, “Proud Teen Mom. Young girls deserve better than Planned Murderhood.” Lilliana explained that she had chosen life for her son Jay after finding out that she was pregnant at the age of 16. A few weeks later, I had the incredible opportunity to meet with Lilliana and hear her story.

Among the many insights I gained from her story, the most poignant was this question, “Why can’t I be happy?” Faced with the myriad of social stigmas associated with teen pregnancy, Lilliana felt that the privilege of being happy was denied to her. She described an instinctive burst of joy upon finding out that she was pregnant, knowing that she was bearing a new life inside of her, but that joy was quickly eclipsed by the harsh reality of her situation.

While pregnant women in stable, respectable situations are entitled to proudly announce the news, plan charming baby showers, and make a fuss over how to decorate the baby’s room, Lilliana wore baggy sweaters and deflected judgmental glances from passers-by on the sidewalks. She felt tremendous pressure to abort her child, and even called Planned Parenthood only to learn that she could pay $300 to lose the child that she already loved. (more…)

A few years ago, four brothers—all under age 10—raised hundreds of dollars for our parent organization, the Pro-Life Action League, by pooling all their Halloween candy and giving it away for donations.

Now their big sister, 15-year old Jessica, has come up with her own creative way to support the pro-life cause.

Jessica is throwing a Mother’s Day “Baby Shower” for pregnancy centers in Aurora to coincide with the monthly protest outside Aurora Planned Parenthood this Saturday:

When 16-year old Thrin Short joined Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust for a peaceful campus outreach at the University of California-Santa Barbara earlier this month, she didn’t expect to be assaulted—by a professor—after the professor incited two students to steal one of the group’s signs showing a photo of an abortion victim.

But that’s exactly what happened (language warning):

It didn’t take long before this story became national news.

Last week, Thrin and her older sister Joan appeared on Fox News to talk about the incident, and Thrin knocked it out of the park with this quote:

Iâ€™m sorry if these signs offended her in any way but, after all, she does…show porn to her students so sheâ€™s not really the one to talk about offending images â€¦. The pictures, yes, show violence after it happened, but what is so much worse than the pictures is the violence itself. And if we have to show what is happening out there to stop it then we have to go there and show it.

I was really excited to hear about the first annual Catholic School Life Rally held earlier this month outside the South Wind Women’s Center abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas.

The idea for the rally was conceived by the 10-member senior class at St. John’s Catholic High School in Beloit, Kansas. One of the highlights of the rally was an impressive and heartfelt speech given by one member of the class, 17-year old Katie Greenwood.

Here are some of the highlights of Katie’s speech:

I am the oldest of 13 kids. I love each of my brothers and sisters so much, I couldnâ€™t live without them. But, I do have three siblings that I have to live without. Iâ€™ve actually never met them. My mom has had three miscarriages; the most recent miscarriage was actually confirmed two nights ago. Do you have any idea the heart-wrenching experience I went through the night my parents told our family what happened? I want you to picture 10 kids, ranging in ages from 17 to 2 years old, so excited for a new baby brother or sister. We were so happy. I was going to get to be the godmother to this child, we were already having the sibling wars on whether the baby should be a boy or girl, we already had the names picked out. We could not wait for this baby. Picture that joy. Now can you imagine the sorrow in my family when we were told that our baby brother or sister died before we ever got to meet him or her? That we will never, ever get to see this child grow up? Never get to show him our world? We would have cherished this child, just as we would cherish any other child in the womb of any other person. Children are a blessing. They are precious and sacred. They are loved by God, and we acknowledge the love and value that God places on every, single one of them. (more…)

I once found a five-dollar bill. That was a good surprise. A few days later, I found that my car wouldnâ€™t start. That was a bad surprise.

My first “Face the Truth Tour” landed somewhere in the middle. Rather than being like free money or a failing motor system—completely good or bad—spending eight days traveling all around Chicago and showing graphic abortion pictures to my fellow citizens stands somewhere in the middle as a surprisingly difficult, surprisingly revealing, and surprisingly rewarding experience.

The difficulty, I suppose, should have been expected, a natural complement to the time of year and the focus of our protest. After all, the July heat and the hatred surrounding the abortion debate are not exactly new patterns in our climate or culture. (more…)

Since 2000, the League has conducted a week-long tour all across the Chicagoland area. At each stop, League staff and volunteers line a busy intersection with graphic pictures of abortion to show the public what it really is. Get the full Tour itinerary here.

“That’s What an Aborted Baby Looks Like?”

Although it’s controversial, this pro-life tactic has proven itself enormously important in the fight against abortion.

Many people truly believe that what’s being aborted is merely a clump of cells or a blob of tissue. If you’ve never been part of a Face the Truth demonstration, you’d be amazed how often we hear passersby saying things like, “That’s what an abortion an aborted baby looks like?”

If you’ve heard people voice objections to Face the Truth, or if you have objections or questions yourself, please check out our Answering Common Objections page, where we answer some of those questions in depth. (more…)

Would you be willing to ride three hours, one way, on a bus, so you could pray outside an abortion clinic?

The students at St. John’s Catholic High School in Beloit, Kansas have done just that â€” and not just once, but numerous times, most recently last month.

I spoke yesterday with Andrew Niewald, a theology teacher at the school, who is eager to share the story of his students’ courageous pro-life witness in the hope that other Catholic schools will be willing to provide similar opportunities for their students to put their pro-life beliefs into action out in the world.

The students at St. John’s have been the subject of several feature articles recently, including one at LifeSite by Rita Diller of STOPP.

In it, Andrew is quoted as saying:

We tried all sorts of things, including watching The Silent Scream and other abortion videos, but that did not have the impact we needed. Once the students were out there, three or four feet from the girls coming in to have abortions, begging them not to go in, it made it so much more real. …

We could take the students to the World War II museum, let them see the memorabilia behind glass doors, but that does not have the same impact as taking them to the front lines. We take them, instead, to the battle lines, and the conviction they walk away with is tremendous.

The importance of Andrew’s observations here cannot be overstated. (more…)

This past weekend, Eric Scheidler and I traveled to Los Angeles for the second annual International Pro-Life Youth Conference to join hundreds of enthusiastic young pro-lifers and an All-Star cast of speakers, including Lila Rose, Fr. Frank Pavone, Ryan Bomberger, Star Parker, Troy Newman, Bryan Kemper, and Kristan Hawkins.

On the first day of the conference, Eric Scheidler delivered a new PowerPoint presentation provocatively titled “First Convince Them You’re Wrong”.

Eric explained that when we talk about abortion with those who are firmly committed to the “pro-choice” ideology, they very often think that the pro-life position doesn’t deserve a hearing, and that we pro-lifers are completely crazy.

Our first step, then, has to be convince our “pro-choice” audience that they need to give the pro-life position a second look. (more…)

The next Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally is only three days away, and today our list of cities has topped 140!

More than 125,000 people attended the March 23 and June 8 Rallies, and the number of cities on board for October 20 indicates that the Stand Up for Religious Freedom campaign shows no signs of weakening.

On the contrary, opposition among the American people to the HHS Mandate’s assault on religious freedom is intense—and getting stronger!

From Miami, Florida to Seattle, Washington and all the way out to Honolulu, Hawaii the American people of all ages are sending a message that we will not stand idly by while the federal government forces all employer health plans to provide free contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs, regardless of any moral or religious objections.

Check out the Locations Page to see all the cities taking part and find a Rally near you.

There’s a great pro-life event beginning tomorrow in over 300 cities across the country: the 40 Days for Life prayer campaign.

From September 26th through November 4th, 40 Days for Life prayer vigils will be held outside abortion clinics in 316 locations in the U.S., Canada, Australia, England, Spain, and Uganda.

This will be the eleventh 40 Days for Life campaign, and the results of the first ten have been amazing:

MORE THAN 525,000 PEOPLE of all ages have joined together to
pray and fast for an end to abortion

At least 5,928 BABIES HAVE BEEN SAVED from abortion—and those
are just the ones we know about

69 abortion workers have QUIT THEIR JOBS and walked away from
the abortion industry

24 abortion facilities COMPLETELY SHUT DOWN following local 40
Days for Life vigils

And this fall’s 40 Days will be the biggest one yet — more babies will be saved, more parents will be spared a lifetime of regrets, and more abortion workers will have their hearts touched and leave their jobs.

I hope you won’t want to miss the chance to take part in this historic pro-life prayer campaign. You can find the 40 Days site nearest you here.

With our summer “Face the Truth” Tour getting ready to hit the streets July 6-14, the Pro-Life Action League â€” GFL’s parent organization â€” is proud to present an exciting video explaining the Face the Truth approach to pro-life activism and why we believe it’s one of the most important tools in fighting abortion:

The list of cities taking part in tomorrow’s Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally now stands at 160—far surpassing the 145 cities that participated in the first Stand Up Rally on March 23.

The number of cities on board for the June 8 Nationwide Rally shows that the massive turnout seen at that first Rally on March 23 was hardly a one-time phenomenon.

Opposition among the American people to the HHS Mandate’s assault on religious freedom is intense—and getting stronger!

From Augusta, Maine to Miami, Florida to Fairbanks, Alaska to Honolulu, Hawaii the American people are sending a message that we will not stand idly by while the federal government forces all employer health plans to provide free contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs, regardless of any moral or religious objections.

When Friday night comes around, you don’t want to find yourself saying, “I wish I had gone to the Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally.”

Don’t be that guy. Be there!

Check out the Locations Page to see all the cities taking part and find a Rally near you!